KZN police expose SAPS insider who erased Stuart Scharnick’s criminal history
KZN police have uncovered a shocking case of internal tampering — a SAPS employee allegedly altered criminal records linked to controversial businessman Stuart Scharnick. A forensic probe is now underway.
Image: Kamogelo Moichela/IOL News
KwaZulu-Natal police have revealed that a South African Police Service (SAPS) employee accessed and altered the national criminal record system to remove information linked to controversial businessman Stuart Scharnick.
In a press briefing on Thursday, Acting Deputy Provincial Commissioner for Crime Detection, Major General Anthony Gopal, said that system logs show the employee made the changes on January 16, 2025, this year.
He said the deleted records were traced through the system’s audit trail and that a forensic investigation was underway.
"In our course of doing this preliminary investigation, on the 16th of January, a particular employee of the South African Police Services went into the criminal record system and made some adjustments to the benefit of Mr Stuart Shanek," Gopal said.
Gopal added that the employee who made the changes did not fully understand the auditing system, and the deleted records remain visible in the system’s back end.
"Unfortunately, the particular employee doesn't understand the full extent of the auditing side of the back end of systems. And on the back end of systems, the transactions that he deleted reflect and remain on the back end of the system," Gopal said.
"The entire forensic side of the system investigation will now be continuing to bring that evidence forward and to hold that employee accountable,"
IOL previously reported Scharnick opened cases, including one of defeating the ends of justice against the South African Police Service’s head of Crime Intelligence, Lieutenant General Dumisani Khumalo, at the Pretoria Central police station earlier this week.
“We have to start with the lies that he put on record, that I was convicted of 18 hijackings. I have not been convicted of one hijacking in my life," Scharnick said.
"I have my records from the Local Criminal Record Centre (LCRC), and if General Khumalo had any intelligence, as the head of intelligence, he would have picked up the phone and phoned the Local Criminal Record Centre, which keeps the records of all the cases."
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